The Walls Came Down

I’m not sure whether there was one trigger or many but the reality of my situation kind of hit home yesterday. Maybe I was just wasn’t really processing it correctly. Maybe it has just been building for a bit but I have only 14 working days left until I am no longer an actual employee of anything. This kind of temporary thing where I’m more like a ghost showing up to haunt the place for an hour or two ends. I will no longer be welcome to freely enter places that have been a regular part of my routine for the last oh so many years.

And there are all the adult decisions that have to be dealt with. Insurance is supposed to be a seamless transition but it will likely require phone calls to people to make sure things are dealt with. There are other things regarding pension and 401(k) that have to be dealt with and that requires more phone calls and more work. And there is still that question of what the heck am I going to do with myself when this all ends. I don’t know what I want to do. I just know what I don’t want to do which is not helpful.

I’ve always been the type to do things at the last minute. Whenever I try to plan something, there is this voice in the back of my mind saying “oh there is plenty of time”. But there really isn’t plenty of time. I’ve got this nagging feeling in the back of my head that I’m forgetting something but I don’t know what it could be. Like I’m going to wake up on the day after and realize I should have done something and now I can’t do it. Probably not a rational thing but that’s kind of where I am right now.

And I’ve got this call with the outplacement person at 11:30. I have no idea what to expect. What am I supposed to say? Do I want their help or not? Not really wanting to shut the door completely but I’m not looking to jump back into another full time corporate gig. Is that going to look bad? Shouldn’t I want to be doing something? That’s what I hear all the time. Why does it even matter what this person thinks? I haven’t done a lot with their wonderful website because there was always more time – except there isn’t.

What is nice is that I was at work yesterday and talking with a couple of people. Got one guy who wants to keep in touch so that’s on me which I can handle. And he’s offered whatever help I need. This is a guy who’s one of those serious extrovert/networking pros so I know he’d have good connections. I was walking back from the fitness center and ran into two people who helped with all our incubators and walk ins. They had of course heard (everyone has) and we talked for a bit. At the end, the guy said to let him know if I needed anything. It is what I will miss the most. Not that I was ever able to form real close relationships with a lot of people (that’s all on me) but I’ll miss the interactions with the good people.

I promised a little dance stuff so I’ll get to that. I’m so indecisive right now. More so than usual. I keep going over things and seeing all sides and not knowing what the right thing is. I suspect that’s just a sign of how scrambled up I am on the inside. I’ve never been especially good at making decisions but I normally can get to a place where something just feels right and I go with that. Now, everything feels both right and wrong.

Well that was actually about dance even though you couldn’t have guessed. Its about Showcase which JoNY finally mentioned yesterday. They went ahead and signed me up for everything because the deadline was on Saturday. Part of me wants to go but another part of me doesn’t. I’m not comfortable with where all the dances are and there is so much swirling around my head right now that I’m not sure how focused I’d be over the next three weeks.

One thing I know about dancing is that a lot of it is mental. If you come into the game defeated, then it is pretty much game over. Performance anxiety and lack of confidence always come to me right before events like this so that’s not new. What usually happens is that I get to a Showcase and I can forget all that stuff and just dance. So I could probably do that again here and maybe it would be OK. On the other hand, I’ve never had a Showcase on the day before my career officially ends. I’m just starting to feel the emotions around that I know they will become more intense as the date gets closer.

But maybe here is the simplest argument for not doing Showcase. I’ve got a lot of stressors in my life right now. Prepping for Showcase is a big source of stress because it always brings out my insecurities and anxieties. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to add that on top of what I’m going through with the ending of the job. Could seriously push me over the edge. Or that could all just be a giant rationalization. See I can’t make up my freaking mind.

Or, let’s try this in an even simpler way. The things associated with work and the end of the job are not fun. Thinking about what the hell I’m going to do with myself is not fun. I need something that is fun. Prepping for Showcase is not fun. Missing Showcase would not be fun but I could always look to the next one. Just dancing without any added pressure would at least allow me to turn off some the other things whirling around inside me.

After all this rambling, my instincts are telling me that skipping Showcase is the right choice.

So I should talk a little bit about the studio yesterday. They decided to put the Silver group back on Tuesday because only one couple was showing up on Wednesday. Z was teaching and it was supposed to be Fox Trot. But she got into the pattern, decided to change her mind and gave us a Country Waltz step she adapted to Fox Trot and that she uses in routines for both her competing students. Group classes with Z fall into two groups. One is when she’s serious about the teaching thing and tries to give us something useful. The second is when she seems to just be winging it because she didn’t really want to do it in the first place. Last night was door number two. So that wasn’t a lot of fun.

I’ll leave with this. I caught some back and forth between Z and JoNY and they were probably discussing the New Girl and not in good terms. Every now and then some of the backstage studio drama rises to the surface and there is often kind of a Mean Girls vibe with the favored instructor and the not so favored instructor. Watching New Girl’s face at the end of my lesson and I just got a huge wave of sadness. I could swear she said “bye” to me rather than “hi” but it could be my hearing. Anyway, I suspect she is not long for the studio and will probably disappear into the night one day never to be seen or heard from again. And it just brings up my feeling that sometimes it seems like they treat these instructors like disposable parts – use em up and get rid of em. I hate that part of Franchise studio life. And that’s all I want to say about inside studio stuff.